“Flying ant day” in Britain is all about sex. Picture it: millions of tiny little winged ants soaring into the sky in a ritualistic orgy under the hot sun.
Let that sink in.
For about six weeks at the height of summer in Britain, typically between mid-July through the early days of September, winged ants emerge from their colonies and ascend to the air to find a mate. They are everywhere. And, despite the name, it’s not just one day, but many days.
“There’s often a day where it seems when you look on social media and across the newspapers, that ants have flown and it becomes this ‘flying ant day,’” said Adam Hart, a professor of science communication at the University of Gloucestershire, more than 100 miles northwest of London.
“We have lots of such days,” he noted. “But generally, you end up with one that it seems to attract a lot of attention.”
Tilly Collins, a senior fellow at the Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, said that the purpose of all the ant sex was to find partners with whom they could create new colonies. “This is simply how ant species all over the world tend to reproduce,” she said.
The mating action has gained notoriety partly because the insects become nuisances to anyone outdoors at the wrong time. In 2017, they invaded Wimbledon, flying onto the court, bags and players.
Here’s what you should know about flying ants, according to Dr. Collins and Professor Hart.
What are flying ants?
First, know that ants are ubiquitous. The ones seen walking on the sidewalks and in gardens are worker ants. These wingless insects do not reproduce, Professor Hart said. Their job is to make the colony bigger.
At a certain time of the year, however, ants will begin producing larvae, which will develop into potential new queens and males with wings. The flying ants are essentially the reproductive members of the colonies.
When the time is right, the winged ants will all leave at once and mate, hopefully with ants from other colonies and not their siblings (more on that later). The female ants will then go on to start a new colony by digging holes into the soil and laying eggs.
Why do they need to fly?
Certain ants develop wings to help them spread out from their native colony so they can mate with unrelated males, Professor Hart said, noting that the insects want to avoid inbreeding.
“It’s a good way of getting some genetic diversity in their offspring and making sure they don’t compete with their mother colony,” he said, adding that the entire event lasts just a couple of hours.
Ants are important for the environment.
“Ants are very, very important to the ecosystem,” Dr. Collins said. “They’re quite substantial predators that eat a lot of other insects.”
Although ants are often labeled nuisances to humans, they are hard-working insects that condition the soil by burrowing. “They bring nutrition down into the soil,” Dr. Collins said. “They clean up an area quite often, taking dead and dying things from the surface and get those buried into the soil.”
Flying ants themselves are useful outside of reproducing; they are sources of nutrition for birds during the summer.
The weather plays a role in predicting when flying ants will emerge.
While flying ants will typically emerge between mid-July and early September in England, the weather conditions have to be just right. Temperatures must be above 77 degrees Fahrenheit, or 25 degrees Celsius, Professor Hart said, and the winds must be relatively low, with no rain.
Swarms of flying ants can sometimes be so dense they are detected on rain radar, said a spokeswoman for the Met Office, Britain’s national weather service. The office picked up swarms in 2019, 2020 and 2021. No swarms have been detected so far this season, the spokeswoman said.
Where are flying ants usually found?
Everywhere. Dr. Collins says that when the conditions are optimal, flying ants can be seen anywhere and everywhere. “People see them around their homes because that tends to be where the people are,” she said. “We see them in cities. We often see them because the surface is smooth. So you see the insects really easily. They come up between the cracks of pavements and fly around looking for a mate.”
How annoying are flying ants?
That depends on your level of tolerance. Flying ants are not dangerous, Professor Hart said, but in large numbers they could make an outdoor event uncomfortable for a couple of hours.
“They could be landing on everything; they can make it tricky to drive if you’ve lots of them on your windscreen,” he said. “You’re out at a barbecue and there are just ants landing everywhere around you. That can be a bit annoying, but they’re completely harmless.”
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